An Ordinary Life

Contents
 
 
 Cover
 Title
 Contents
 Welder
 On the Sorrow God Pours into the Little Boat of Life
 Poem Beginning with a Rejected Line by W. H. Auden
 My Mother, on Horseback, in a Blizzard
 Often the Dying Ask for a Map
 Milk and Cookies: The County Seat Wars
 Ornithology
 Allegory
 What He Said, What She Said
 Black Friday
 The Water Ballet
 At a Meeting of Scholars I Think of Aunt Bea
 My Room Number Is Written in Braille
 Kimonos
 Revenge
 Benny Goodman
 The Watchmaker in the Rue Dauphine
 Home
 Seven Prose Poems from the Journals of Roy Eldridge Garcia
 
 The Hat
 The Glass Children
 Prophecy
 Mario
 A Small Town in Kansas
 Spatula
 The Meeting of the Board
 
 Inward
 Groceries
 The First Word
 For Junior Gilliam (1928–1978)
 My Father, Fighting the Fascists in WWII
 Two Sonnets
 An Ordinary Life
 Acknowledgments
 Also by B. H. Fairchild
 Copyright
 
 
 
 Guide
 
 Cover
 Title
 Contents
 
 
 
 Page List
 
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 AN ORDINARY LIFE
 
 poems
 
 B. H. Fairchild
 
 
 
 I am proud to dedicate this book to the memory of my brave, beloved son, Paul Fairchild (1970–2017), lover and maker of comic books.
 In brightest day, in blackest night,
 No evil shall escape my sight.
 —The Green Lantern
 
 
 Be kind to everyone you meet, for they are fighting a great battle.
 —PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA
 
 
 CONTENTS
 Welder
 On the Sorrow God Pours into the Little Boat of Life
 Poem Beginning with a Rejected Line by W. H. Auden
 My Mother, on Horseback, in a Blizzard
 Often the Dying Ask for a Map
 Milk and Cookies: The County Seat Wars
 Ornithology
 Allegory
 What He Said, What She Said
 Black Friday
 The Water Ballet
 At a Meeting of Scholars I Think of Aunt Bea
 My Room Number Is Written in Braille
 Kimonos
 Revenge
 Benny Goodman
 The Watchmaker in the Rue Dauphine
 Home
 Seven Prose Poems from the Journals of Roy Eldridge Garcia
 The Hat
 The Glass Children
 Prophecy
 Mario
 A Small Town in Kansas
 Spatula
 The Meeting of the Board
 Inward
 Groceries
 The First Word
 For Junior Gilliam (1928–1978)
 My Father, Fighting the Fascists in WWII
 Two Sonnets
 An Ordinary Life
 Acknowledgments
 
 
 AN ORDINARY LIFE
 
 
 WELDER
 My hood’s lens darkens, a molten weld pool
 boiling up in this portable green night
 where I can feel, sometimes, beautifully alone.
 The constant buzz and sputter of the arc
 fills my head like a hard rain coming down,
 and with the right stick and amperage,
 a steady path of light begins to form.
 Keep the arc gap tight, the angle steady,
 and you’re already headed home. No sweat.
 My son, back from college, says welding
 is alchemy (a new word for me), metal
 grafted onto metal, not a living thing
 but like a living thing, a new form given
 to the world—not your world but the one
 where I have a place, a craft, a trade, a self.
 Handing me my hood as I leave for work,
 he says, You’re medieval, a warrior, a knight
 of the industrial order. As a boy,
 he would follow me on jobs, chipping slag,
 the hard crust welding always leaves behind.
 I work alone now. Work is who I am,
 traveling day and night to oil rigs
 and project sites in No Man’s Land, sleeping
 in my truck, rising to the task at hand.
 Last night it rained, lulling me into a sort
 of shallow sleep, 
 ON THE SORROW GOD POURS INTO THE LITTLE BOAT OF LIFE
 And God was there like an island I had not rowed to.
 —ANNE SEXTON, THE AWFUL ROWING TOWARD GOD
 I stand in the Punk Rock aisle of Rhino Records
 mindlessly watching an old video of a Supremes
 concert, trying not to think of anything, really,
 giving myself to sounds from fifty years ago
 that celebrate nothing now except my own youth,
 my own Sixties when the world was ending
 and beginning all over again, and it would be
 all about love and the absence of war forever
 once Nam was over, and the lies would stop,
 and the boys would come back home, and Nixon
 and McNamara and Westmoreland would pay
 the price, and that’s of course when it happens
 and I can’t stop it, my son died last week,
 until the young woman standing next to me
 bends down quickly, reaching to help pull me up,
 and I try to make a joke of it, saying Thank you.
 You know, fifty years ago I would have asked you
 to dance, and she says, Sir, I would be happy
 to dance with you, and so we do for a few seconds
 there in